blogger apologizes for plagiarism

Writer Sean-Paul Kelley, who has been reporting extensively on the war via his Web log The Agonist, has acknowledged and apologized for posting information without attributing it to the subscription news service that was its source. Wired News recently ran a story noting the similarities between Kelley's blog posts and information from Stratfor, a commercial information service. According to the Wired story, Kelley and Stratfor have reached an amicable agreement in which the former can run two attributed posts from the latter per day.

This situation is truly a shame...Kelley had achieved some notoriety for his minute-by-minute blogging of the war, and the site's increase in traffic forced him to launch several mirror sites. However, the "new medium" of blogging does not excuse a writer from the mandatory practice of attributing sources and direct quotes, by hyperlink if nothing else. By violating one of the fundamental tenets of professional writers, Kelley has called his own professional credibility into question. To his credit, Kelley has acknowledged and apologized for his poor judgement, and a recent visit to his site shows a welcome increase in attributions and hyperlinks. But his readers--and potential publishers--have a right and a duty to keep his transgression in mind.